2009 Hyundai Santa Fe SE from North America - Comments

4th Feb 2013, 14:46

I am the original commenter. We now have 28,400 miles on our 2009 Santa Fe. The Santa Fe seems to be running and driving very well, even though we were involved in a three car accident with an uninsured teenager who ran a stop sign.

Our left front fender, left front door panel, and left front suspension had to be replaced. Luckily, nobody was hurt in the accident. The airbags did not deploy, which was surprising because we were hit very hard from the side. The body shop did a very good job of fixing the suspension and aligning the wheels.

18th Mar 2013, 11:02

I am the original poster. I have just noted (at 30K miles) that the weatherstripping is seriously degraded on the driver's side door. It looks like this is a design defect that some people are complaining about on the Hyundai forums. I will take it to the dealer to see if they will fix it. At least one owner is complaining that his dealer refuses to fix this defect. I have never seen this type of weatherstrip failure before. Most of the time, the weatherstrip on your average car just comes loose and can be fixed with a little adhesive. The Hyundai weatherstripping must be very cheap for it to fail so soon.

1st Jul 2013, 11:38

I am the original poster.

I took my Santa Fe to the dealership for a brake switch recall, an idling problem, and have the driver's front door weatherstripping replaced. The dealership fixed the brake switch, but did not fix the idling problem or the weatherstripping. The service writer said they had to order the weatherstripping and would call me in a couple of days when the part came in. That was two weeks ago, so I don't expect to get any call from them. I told the service writer that the idling problem was probably due to a faulty throttle position sensor, but the dealer refused to fix the problem. The service writer told me that I had to have the throttle body cleaned. When I looked into the throttle body, I could not see any carbon or dirt, but I cleaned the throttle body with SeaFoam spray anyway. I did not see any white smoke coming out of the tailpipe when I did the cleaning, so I assume the throttle body did not really require cleaning with only 31K miles on the car.

8th Jul 2013, 13:01

I am the original poster.

Last weekend, the Santa Fe began to stall and the "check engine" light turned on. The computer went into a "safe mode" and the car would only travel 5-10 MPH. We made it into a parking lot and shut off the engine for about 5 minutes. We restarted the engine and "check engine" light remained on, but we were able to get back home. I took the car to the dealer, and the mechanic said the throttle position sensor was shorted. He replaced the TPS and the degraded weatherstripping on the driver's side door. The car is running and idling normally now.